


The World Will Burn

by aspermoth



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Backstory, Explicit Language, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:12:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The true identity of the Joker is an enigma, even to himself. But here's how he got from a nameless nobody on the Gotham Docks to the nemesis of Batman himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Will Burn

He wakes on the sand under the docks of Gotham City, not knowing or caring who he is or how he came to be there. All he knows is that he is stripped: stripped of his memory; of his sanity; of his sense, his heart, his fingerprints, even his DNA. There's nothing left of his past; there's nothing left inside.

And he has never felt better.

He sits up and examines himself. No physical injuries, other than the feeling his skin has been scrubbed down with steel wool and acid, but it's an enjoyable feeling, a constant burning reminder that he's alive. His only possessions are the clothes on his back - a purple suit, of all things, which he actually rather likes - and a pack of playing cards that he discovers in his pocket. He pulls them out and flicks through them idly. Jokers: all of them from different packs, all of them Jokers. Joker. The Joker. He likes that. It's a name you don't fuck around with.

All right, then: he's the Joker. Now what?

Off to civilisation, of course. He stands up, stretches, licks his lips. There's a lot of fun to be had in cities, he's sure of it, and it's time to find some fun.

~*~

Gotham City is Heaven for somebody like him: a cesspool of criminality, of cheap thrills and the heady scent of danger. You don't get bored easily in Gotham.

He calls himself Joe Kerr to start with - after all, "the Joker" is a wee bit conspicuous, and he doesn't want to draw too much attention to himself to start with. He wants to be invisible until he's ready to be seen; inconspicuous until he's ready to start the show; safe until he's big enough to be a threat. He picks up a job with a low-level criminal group, learning the ropes, learning how to control, to threaten, to beat and to steal. And he loves it - the violence, the danger, the adrenaline.

It makes him feel alive.

When he isn't working, the world is dull, dull and grey and lifeless. He can't feel anything except boredom and restlessness. No joy, no sorrow, just boredom and a sort of empty hollowness that is nearly unbearable. Theft, threats, violence: all of them make that hollow feeling melt away like butter in a frying pan, and it is _glorious_.

~*~

The first thing that he kills is a rat. In the basement where he's squatting (he needs to save his money for now) are a bunch of humane rat traps, the sort where the rat merely becomes entrapped in a cage rather than having its head chopped off or whatever the cool alternative is these days. The rat would have starved after a while. Nobody came to check the traps anymore.

He broke its neck.

The little bones snap delicately in his fingers. The rodent gives out a brief shriek of pain and then falls utterly silent, utterly still, utterly limp in his hands. The thrill is amazing, the thrill of killing another living creature. Much better than plain old violence. He should try murder next.

There's no use letting the rat go to waste. He rips off its head, tears it to pieces, discards the guts, and eats the dead rat raw. Delicious.

~*~

Some of his memories return over time, but they're fragmented, incomplete. He remembers that he hates his father, although he has no idea why and doesn't care very much. It makes for a good story and who doesn't love a Freudian excuse in court? It's like stealing candy from a baby.

He also remembers which dentist he used to attend, although he has no idea why that particular detail returns. It's quite useful though.

He burns the whole place down.

Hey, he needed to destroy his dental records somehow, and he didn't know what the hell his old name was. This was quicker. And a hell of a lot more fun. He also somehow acquires a nurse's uniform in the process, but hey, it'll probably end up being useful somehow.

Four days later, he finds out that one of the dental nurses burned to death.

Technically, this is his first murder, but as far as he's concerned, it was an accident and so it doesn't count. Honest.

~*~

He quite enjoys living like a tramp, squatting in the basements of buildings, eating raw rats. It's dangerous to live like that in Gotham. Villains don't avoid you just because you look like you earn nothing but stupid people's spare pocket change.

He has knives now, though. Plenty of knives. More knives that the average man probably needs, actually, but he works by the theory that you can never have too many knives. There's also a potato peeler in the collection somewhere, but again, you never know when these sorts of things end up being useful.

He doesn't mind looking or smelling like a hobo either. It's not like he's trying to impress anybody. He's trying to look unthreatening, unimportant, and if looking like a hobo does that, then look like a hobo he shall.

Besides, hygiene is a waste of time and it doesn't stick.

~*~

His first proper murder is the sweetest thing he's ever experienced. His love of violence and brutality, plus his efficiency and cunning, had caught the eye of the boss, and so he was assigned a test: kill a shop keeper who isn't paying protection money. Do it quickly, do it efficiently, do it well.

He doesn't have those knives because they're pretty, he can tell you that: he's knife savvy.

He wants to savour this first killing, but he needs to do it quickly to satisfy the boss. He swipes the blade across the man's throat, carving a hot red smile across the flesh that drools a sheet of blood down the blue suit, staining it purple.

Aw, now they matched.

He crouches down next to the man as he lies dying on the floor, savouring the few seconds of gasps, of moans, of facial twitches. Then everything goes still.

Then the rush hits.

It's better than anything he's ever experienced before, a heady rush of excitement and adrenaline. He laughs, whoops, claps his hands.

Damn if this isn't the best thing _ever_.

His head buzzes with it, bright and sparkling and he feels more alive than he's ever felt before.

Watch out, Gotham: he has blood on his hands now, and he likes it.

~*~

The boss disapproves of his killing methods. Too messy, he says, too inexact. Knives are not for mobsters. Guns are for mobsters. He won't be killing again.

Well, not for a while, at least, but the boss doesn't know that.

Violence and robbery become mundane. Boring. They don't destroy the hollow feeling anymore. He burns for a murder, longs for it, even as he's kicking people's stomachs in on the boss's orders.

Nothing works.

He's going insane. Well, more insane than he was already. He can't cope with this level of boredom. Nothing is exciting any more; nothing is worth anything.

He feels like the walking dead, like some kind of zombie, just going through the motions, a facsimile of reality with no heart or soul. Not that he really had a heart or a soul anyway, but it's hard to find metaphors for this sort of thing sometimes.

Boring. How can Gotham be this boring? It's ridiculous. There is no way that a crime-ridden rat-hole could be thus un-entertaining, but since he's killed, it is now.

Damn it.

In his basement squat, he remembers the pain he felt when he first woke at Gotham Docks, how revitalising that felt. He tries quite a few different ways - hitting walls, cutting himself, even taking the potato peeler to his arm at one point. And it feels pretty damn good. Not as good as killing, of course, but a lot better than doing nothing at all.

He leaves the crime group, hiding in his basement, seeking the kicks he needs in self-mutilation.

One day, he slides a knife into his mouth, tasting the sweet kiss of the steel. He presses it against the soft flesh inside of his cheek. He tastes blood, hot and metallic and salty.

He rips it through.

It hurts. Oh yes it hurts, it hurts so good. He laughs, then takes the knife to the other side of his face.

Over time, the wounds heal. They scar. A look is born.

He spends his spare time making up stories about how he got them - after all, a past is more fun when it's multiple choice. One day, he says to himself, one day I will be telling these stories to people before I kill them, and they will piss themselves with fear.

He likes that idea.

~*~

He's collected money. Quite a lot of money. Not that he really _needs_ a ton of money to be a criminal, but people are more likely to listen to you when you have the green, and he needs the money to start his reign.

He stabs his old boss first though, of course. It's easier to take over a little empire and make it bigger than to create your own from scratch.

This is the first time he stabs slowly, twisting the knife, watching the tiny expressions flit across the man's face. Oh it's delicious, truly delicious. So intimate.

They follow him without question because he pays well and even criminal bastards known complete psychopaths when they see them.

He's Joe Kerr no longer: now, he's the Joker. And he's getting ready to emerge.

~*~

The arrival of Batman threatens to ruin everything that the Joker has been working for. This bastard vigilante blustering around in a flying rodent suit, threatening the entire criminal world of Gotham. What a dick. And he's made everything theatrical too, and that means that the villains have to rise up and meet him.

Having said that, the Joker is grateful for one thing Batman did: letting the lunatics escape from Arkham. It's so much easier for him to recruit from the mentally ill. They ask fewer questions and accept being paid peanuts.

Some of them literally.

But if Batman is going to raise the stakes, then so is he. Gotham is going to enter a new age of theatrics. And the Joker is going to have the most fun of his life.

~*~

He's looking for a signature look. There's the purple suit of course, and he's dyed his hair a shade of mossy green that clashes like Hell - because there's nothing that says individuality like a purple suit and green hair. Clashing is the key to being memorable!

But it's his face that's the problem. Having acquired a mirror for his basement - you don't want to know how - he has come to notice that he has one of those faces that aren't particularly memorable, despite the self-inflicted scars.

It's only when he sees a street performer dressed as a clown terrorising a small child that he gets the idea of make-up. There's just something in the way that said small child is screaming and crying in terror that reminds him that he also hates clowns, and that quite a lot of people do.

And everybody is scared of crazy clowns.

He experiments for a while with colours and styles, before setting on a dead white face with black, sunken eyes and red wildly splattered over his mouth and scars.

Now if that doesn't make kiddies wet their pants, he doesn't know what will.

~*~

His biggest heist ever is tomorrow. A bank heist - stealing from the mob, no less. He has it all worked out - the henchman, the chain of command, even orchestrating a cunning sequence of murders so that he gets away with all the loot. Nobody will know or care about the deadbeats he hires being murdered, and people are always willing to work for him. He has a lot of cash.

There's one thing he's missing, though: a catch-phrase. He has a look, he has scar stories, he even has a signature - his Joker cards - but he doesn't have a catch-phrase yet. All the best villains have some sort of catch-phrase. It makes them memorable.

He laughs at himself then. My, my, my, is he ever taking this too seriously. Why so serious, eh?

Yes! That's it! "Why so serious?" After all, life is a laugh, a joke, a fun little party that's all about the adrenaline rush. Well, it is for him, anyway. People should lighten up.

The transformation is now complete and the Joker has been unleashed. The fuse is lit.

Soon, the world will burn.


End file.
